Solemn Australians think that an interest in design is a superficial and trivial interest. This is actually an improvement, they used to think it effeminate and vaguely immoral.

We need better architecture and planning: more imaginatively exciting, more involving, more our own.

Australia is, in fact, an old man's bureaucracy.

Insects influenced the shape of the Australian house. Some, like the white ant and lthe Lyctus borer, worked quietly and invisibly until a little shower of yellow dust or a sudden collapse indicated their presence. Others, like the mosquito and housefly, were less dangerous and more objectionable. The former type influenced structure in minor ways; the latter affected planning to a major degree.

Australia's is a special kind of philistinism, an immovable materialism which puts art and ideas of any kind deliberately and firmly to one side to let the serious business of living proceed without distraction.

Yet the small house, probably more than anything else that man has done, has made the face of Australia and to an extent the faces of Australians. Australia is the small house. Ownership of one in a fenced allotment is as inevitable and unquestionable a goal of the average Australian as marriage.

Adelaide was the first city in Australia, if not in the world, to provide for the health and recreation of all its citizens.